A primary focus for implementing a network environment is to provide electronic resources and services to clients connected to the network. One such electronic resource/service is a web page. Web pages are generally understood to be individual electronic documents making up a website within a client-server network. A server computer delivers an electronic resource to a client computer in response to a request issued by the client computer. The request specifically identifies the electronic resource by a unique address recognizable to the server computer as defining the location of the electronic resource on a given network, such as, for example, the Internet or an intranet.
As is known to those skilled in the art, the unique address of a electronic resource is referred to as a universal resource locator (or “URL”) and may take the following exemplary form: http://www.webpage.com/path/sub-path/object.htm. A URL is typically divided into three constituent parts: a protocol identifier, a domain name and a path; although, the path may not be included in a URL in some circumstances. The protocol identifier identifies the application layer (OSI Reference Model) protocol that is to be used by client computers to render the resource to users. The domain name represents the address of the server computer maintaining the electronic resource on the network and the path identifies the location of the electronic resource within the server computer. Referring back to the exemplary form noted above, the protocol identifier of this URL is “http://,” the domain name of this URL is “www.webpage.com” and the path of this URL is /path/sub-path/object.htm. A fourth and optional constituent part of the URL is a query string containing additional parameters for further specifying the requested resource. The query string is appended to the URL after the path and is separated from the path by a question mark (“?”).
To request a specific electronic resource, a user selects or inputs the URL associated with the electronic resource through a user interface implemented on a client computer. Upon receipt of this URL, the server computer retrieves the associated electronic resource from storage and provides the resource to the client computer for display to the user. While displayed, the electronic resource typically includes multiple information objects embedded in the page and arranged in a predefined order. These information objects may include, for example, text objects, picture objects, clipart and links to other electronic resources maintained on the same or a different server computer maintaining the currently presented electronic resource. As an illustration, a resource server for a vehicle dealership associated with a particular vehicle manufacturer maintains, and thus is operable to serve, i.e., deliver, multiple web pages associated with various vehicles and services which may be purchased through the dealership. While being displayed to users of client computer, these web pages include pictures of the various vehicles as well as hyperlinks that may be selected to request the presentation of other electronic resources related to each of these vehicles.
It is very common that an electronic resource may link to, or reference, another electronic resource on the same or a different server in order to minimize the duplication of content between these pages. In order to establish a link to another electronic resource, the developer of an electronic resource under construction declares a reference to the linked resource within the electronic resource. For example, if the electronic resource under construction is an HTML web page, then the developer includes an “href tag” within the HTML file for the web page. The href tag specifies the URL of the electronic resource being referenced. Declaration of an href tag is a fairly simplistic process that involves manually typing the tag into the electronic resource. However, this current approach is not without at least one significant drawback, as described in the following paragraph.
There typically arises a need at some point in time during the life of an electronic resource for the developer to change the storage location of the electronic resource due to factors such as, but not limited to, load balancing of servers and server maintenance. If, for any reason, a referenced electronic resource moves from one location on a server computer to another location on that or another server computer, the URL of the referenced electronic resource changes accordingly. As such, all current references to that resource that may have been manually incorporated into other electronic resources are no longer valid and must be amended in order for users to properly access the relocated resource via the corresponding link. The otherwise simplistic task of revising each reference to the relocated resource becomes a daunting, time-consuming effort if the re-located web page is referenced in a large number of other electronic resources.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.